This is not a Truce
by equisetum
Summary: This time I wake for real. Sark is still by my side, watching me with drunken half-closed eyes. “I know what she wants,” I tell him. “I know what we need to do.” Slightly AU Sarkney.
1. Desert

**1. Desert**

The sweat runs in rivulets down her brow, between her breasts. It wets the backpack and makes her shirt stick and pull at her skin when she moves. She reties the purple bandanna around her head for the thousandth time that day and sighs. _If only it was ten degrees cooler. If only there was a breeze instead of this still heat._

And then she sees it: a rising cloud of dust on the horizon, moving closer and shimmering in the heat. At first she thinks it is another mirage. But as it moves closer she can no longer pretend. Bringing the binoculars up to her eyes she tries to get a good view of the approaching vehicle.

She readies the rifle. Aims for the road where it comes closest to her blind, and waits. Time seems to slow, or maybe it is just the heat stretching the distance unreliably. The second liter of water is almost gone; she finishes it off in two gulps, wipes her mouth, and goes back to waiting.

Finally it is in range. She fires, knocking out two tires. But then there is a third shot, not her own, and the driver slumps forward over the wheel.

_My life is never simple_, she muses, as she takes off towards the truck, gun in hand.

There is no one. No sign of anyone. But they could have approached unseen from the other side. She walks slowly, gun held out in front, finger at the trigger. She turns around to the back of the truck.

And sucks in a sudden breath.

"Agent Bristow."

The voice is smooth, crisp. Though he looks every bit as wilted as she feels. Sweat stains the armpits of his shirt and slicks his face.

"Sark."

She looks down the barrel of his gun, strangely unafraid. _I'm just too hot to care…_

"Fancy meeting you here."

"Why did you kill the driver?"

"Why did you shoot out the tires?" Sark countered.

They stood in silence a few more seconds, sizing each other up. Finally, something in her broke. She smiled, would have laughed if not for his intent face and the gun aimed at her heart.

"Look, neither of us wants to die here. So why don't we put down the guns and talk this through. Or at least beat each other to a pulp with our fists like civilized people."

"A wonderful idea, Sydney. You first."

Now she did laugh. Then she engaged the safety and threw the gun five feet to her right.

"Interesting."

For one moment she thought he would simply kill her. And she didn't particularly care. Anything to escape the blistering heat. But then he followed suit, and leaned up against the tailgate of the truck, examining her with cool eyes.

Sydney turned to the lock and picked it while Sark watched. When it finally came off, he stepped menacingly close, and simply helped lift the rolling door. Her mouth fell open at what was inside.

Absolutely nothing.

She ran around to the front, Sark at her heels, and they scrambled through the cab, tearing away at the two seats, at the driver's clothing. They even checked underneath, on top, and in the engine compartment.

"If this is someone's sick idea of a joke…"

"Your mother comes to mind."

"Don't talk about that woman."

"Perhaps this is the wrong truck," Sark offered.

"Or maybe someone got to it before we did."

"For Christ's sake!" Sark exploded, bringing the heel of his hand down sharply against the front quarterpanel. "I will kill someone if the entire miserable trip to this hellhole turns out pointless!"

Sydney ignored the outburst. She retrieved her gun and started walking back to her blind. She packed up the rifle and water bottles, all of them empty, hoisted the backpack onto her shoulders, and set off.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to Guadalajara," she called back. She sensed no threat from him, now. "There's a roach-infested hotel room and a twenty-year old mattress calling my name."

"Then we're headed in the same direction."

He caught up quickly, and fell into step beside her.

"Perhaps you'd care to join me for dinner?" he asked, his cool mask already back in place. "I have a business proposition if—"

"Shut up."

The rest of the walk passed in silence. At the edge of town, he headed west, while Sydney continued south to her hotel. She knew she wouldn't bother informing the CIA of their encounter. It would only lead to questions: why she didn't shoot him, kill him, capture him. Sydney didn't care to examine those answer quite yet. She was tired, so tired. And somehow she knew that the favor of omission would be reciprocated.


	2. Ballroom

**2. Ballroom**

We meet again in the field. But here there can be no cries of 'out of bounds' or 'foul'. There are no penalties, no referee, and certainly no time out. Our standings are calculated from kills and casualties, healed bullet holes and scarred stab wounds, money, weapons, and Rambaldi artifacts accumulated.

The winner, as ever, is a mystery. But I think it's clear that both of us are losing.

She looks ravishing in a confection of purple silk, waltzing around the dance floor under Agent Vaughn's less than skilled guidance. Her chocolate locks are hidden under a wig of glossy black curls, but I recognize her by the way she moves. Ever since our time together at SD-6 she is unmistakable to me, in any disguise.

I debate whether to cut in on them, in this ballroom crowded with foreign dignitaries and prominent businessmen. After our meeting in the desert, I'm not sure she would even protest. It might be worth it to see her partner's fit of apoplectic rage, unable to make a scene, unwilling to blow their cover. But I am on a schedule. And if I stole her away, I might not want to give her back.

So I skip the posturing, but not the glass of vintage champagne offered me a nameless waiter in black, as invisible as a piece of furniture in this crowd. It is a skill to blend into the background, to escape notice even in plain sight.

I am here on the Covenant's behest, to steal an old Rambaldi ruby, harboring some secret which holds not the remotest interest to me. For myself, I plan to acquire Mr. Benett's account codes to skim a few million for personal use. The safe is easy enough to crack, as is the cipher used to protect his account.

Almost blood red, the cabochon-cut ruby is set as a gold pendant, as large as my thumbnail, with the typical cabochon star glimmering in the dim light of his office. Absurdly, I wonder what it would look like draped around Agent Bristow's neck, rather than languishing in a CIA warehouse or assembled into some madman's masterpiece. I have an odd desire to have it re-cut, to destroy any value it may have to Sloane and Irina, the CIA, the rest of Rambaldi's ardent believers.

At my back, I hear the door handle turn and swing open on well-oiled hinges. Sydney appears, and we have our guns aimed at each other's throats.

"Well, well….this is becoming rather a habit of ours, isn't it?"

"Hand it over, Sark."

"Did you try the champagne? It really is a remarkable vintage."

"I'm not here for small talk. Give me the ruby or I'll shoot."

"I really doubt that."

I hold up the ruby, it's chain twisted around my left hand.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

She snorts, "Stop playing games."

"Oh, but it's all a game."

She moves to strike, a vicious kick that I block with my forearm. I slam her hand on the edge of the desk and she drops the gun; bend her over with my weight on her back, her arm cranked towards her shoulder until the delicate bones of her wrist, bird-like, grate against each other, ready to break. A hiss of pain is all the noise she makes.

I hold the Sig Sauer to her temple, but keep the safety engaged. Maybe she notices, maybe not. It would be easy to kill her, but I toy with her instead.

"I would give it to you, if I wasn't sure you'd just hand it over to the CIA. And then I'd just have to steal it back from project Black Hole."

"A gift? How romantic," she sneered, and bucked underneath me, trying to get free. An extra twist of her arm stilled her once more.

"Just think about this game we play, Sydney. Think about whose pawn you are."

I pressed against her neck, collapsing her carotid, until she began to gray out in my arms, and fell limp against the table. She'll recover quickly, well before her Boy Scout even realizes anything is wrong. On my way out, I grab another glass of the Dom Perignon.

I don't think she realizes how few choices she has had. At least I know I'm nothing more than a puppet, valuable, but ultimately expendable. Again, I wonder where this concern for her comes from. I push it out of my mind as fatigue, as concern for something Irina considers valuable. Sydney is a colleague of sorts. Though we may work for competing interests, she could just as easily be me. She is me: my cognate in the CIA. Her dead eyes, her fatigue is a barometer of my own condition.

I preferred her young and furious, live and livid, as she was in her double agent days. Now, something is missing. And it does not bode well for either of us.


	3. Not a Truce

**3. This is not a Truce**

Kendall was in a rage, though there's nothing unusual about that. Dixon was calm, but the lines around his mouth, parentheses to his thoughts, were etched deeper than usual. And Dad…was Dad. I think he is incapable of being surprised, or at least schooled never to show it.

"You beat Sark dozens of times while working at SD-6. Now, he manages to escape from a crowded party with no witnesses! What the hell is going on? The Rambaldi ruby cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the Covenant!"

"We're just glad to have you back safe and sound," Dixon intervenes. "Now, we've received intel of a Covenant laboratory in the Argentinian countryside. Sark has been spotted several times in Argentina over the last few months. It seems to be a nidus of recent activity."

Lauren looked like she had swallowed something bitter, and Vaughn, sitting next to her, seemed worn and tired. My mind wandered as Dixon droned on. Why hadn't Sark killed me? It would have been so easy. At the party, in the desert, and on countless other missions where we had run across each other. Just as I might have killed him. Over the years we had exchanged snide banter, held each other's secrets to avoid our mutual downfall at SD-6, and marked each other's bodies with bruises and scars. But never a bullet. There is some sort of meaning in that, some message I can't decipher.

But this is not a truce, I keep reminding myself. We are not friends. And when we meet in the field again, I won't hesitate to shoot him. I know he won't hesitate to shoot me. So we'll go our separate ways and neglect this aberration. We will return to being enemies, comfortably, without any of this confusing civility. Yeah right.

Suddenly papers are being shuffled back into folders, chairs are being pushed back, and my father is motioning for me to follow him to a seldom travelled hallway where we would have some privacy.

"There's more to this than you're telling me, Sydney."

"Sark held a gun to my head, Dad, but I don't think he ever clicked off the safety. He said to think about whose pawn I am, then knocked me out. He knows something, doesn't he? About my missing time?"

I don't mention that he seems familiar with Project Black Hole.

"It would seem that way. Which would suggest that his latest employer is somehow involved. Be careful in Argentina, Sydney."

"I will."

I always am. But there is something too unpredictable here. A piece of the puzzle missing. A bit of foreshadowing that, so far, I can't figure out. There's a video of me murdering Sark's father, and he lets me escape unharmed. Twice in as many weeks.

* * *

It's Vaughn and Weiss and I on the plane to Buenos Aires, cordoned off from each other by an uncomfortable silence. Then checking into our separate rooms. They invite me for dinner in the hotel restaurant, which I hastily decline, claiming fatigue. Not so far from the truth: the grueling back-to-back missions don't keep me in shape so much as they keep me exhausted, physically as well as emotionally drained. 

And really, what are we supposed to talk about? The amnesiac, her married ex, and his best guy pal. Both with perfect recall of the last two years, thank you very much. Makes small talk sort of…strained.

So it's grilled salmon and a glass of white wine from room service, a Spanish soap opera droning on in the background, and blissful, dreamless sleep.

* * *

Smash and grab, the three of us plus a few local contacts all in black kevlar body armor, me toting an M4 carbine set for three-round bursts. I'm high on adrenaline as we take out successive patrols on our way in. These men are nothing but hired thugs with little training, who know just enough to use their submachine guns. None of them can aim worth a damn. 

Sark's there across the room as we storm into the lab, already taking off as we barrel down the door. Weiss and Vaughn exchange fire with the guards while several men in lab coats cower behind the work surface, edging on hands and knees towards the door. Before I can even think I'm telling Weiss to cover me as I take off sprinting after Sark. He's a shock of blond hair down the darkened hallway, footsteps echoing away from me.

I drop the seven pound assault rifle in favor of my Beretta 92 but he's already disappearing down a staircase. Down the steps, knees jarring, breath a painful forced stream in and out while my legs burn from the lactic acid build-up. This is what it means to be alive.

Ahead the door is just swinging shut, and I slip through. Only to have it shoved back into me. The gun falls from my hand and is kicked away by a black leather combat boot while I try to regain my breath. He bolts the door shut and delivers a swift kick to my sternum, throwing me back against the concrete wall and knocking the wind out of me yet again. I manage to duck the punch coming towards my face and spin out into the center of the room.

"Fancy meeting you here, Agent Bristow."

He's grinning maniacally, balanced on the balls of his feet. We exchange a flurry of blows, landing a few, blocking most, before falling back once more.

"Cut the crap. This isn't some cocktail party." L_ike last time,_ I add to myself. "We're not friends."

"Oh, but I truly believe we could be. First though, you need to come with me."

"No way in hell."

"That's the thanks I get for trying to save your life?"

I lunge forward, but he steps of out my way, using my own momentum to push me forward so that I almost crash into a table and chairs. He looks impatient.

"What are you talking about?"

"I've rigged the building. If you and your bumbling friends hadn't come along this would have been much cleaner. Warn them if you like. We need to leave."

He walked away a few steps, and turned to see if I was following.

"This is Freelancer. Abort. Repeat: abort. The building is rigged."

Then Sark was dragging me by the arm down another corridor, hot and loud with the sound of machinery and the hum of electricity from the back-up generators. Hydrogen fuel cells. They'll add nicely to the final effect.

Finally, we break out into the cool night air. And keep running across the open ground, into the trees. I lean against one of the massive trunks, taste blood on my lips. Sark's pallor makes his skin almost glow against the blackness of the forest. He turns back to watch, and smiles as a series of explosions set the building aflame.

"Why'd you do it?"

"Those were your ova they were working with. Some believe Rambaldi's second coming is by way of a child. I could not let that happen. We're not always at odds, you and I. Sometimes our goals coincide."

"You could have left me there. Or killed me."

"Ah, but we aren't enemies, Sydney."

"We're not?"

"We are but pieces in play. Our respective employers are enemies. And things just wouldn't be as interesting without you."

"What is this, Sark? What are we doing?"

"I like to think of it as professional courtesy. Doctors give each other discounted services. We don't try too hard to kill each other."

His mouth quirked up, and I couldn't help but smile.

"Do you treat all the agents this way?"

"Just you. You're the only one who's lived long enough to encounter more than once."

"I can live with that." We were almost flirting, and I try not to imagine Vaughn and Weiss, ash-stained and only narrowly escaped with their lives. Hopefully.

He holds out his hand, and we shake on it, his skin hot against my own, the contrast sending shivers down my spine in the cool night air, low into my abdomen.

"Until next time."

Melting into the shadows, he disappears.

* * *

In the cramped van on the way back the silence seems interminable. We lost one man, and failed to acquire the Covenant's science project. And I am glad. My eggs, the scar transecting my skin. A scar I have no memory of. The possibility of ever bearing children—a prospect so laughably absurd, given my current life—is overshadowed by the imperative not to be drawn back into Rambaldi's prophecy. His second coming. 

The front desk had an envelope for me, delivered just an hour ago. In my room I slit it open. A large oval cut ruby slid out, set in a ring with triangular diamonds on either side. The note read: _So that it is of no use to anyone. Enjoy, my Sydney._ It was the Rambaldi stone, recut and reset. Professional courtesy, indeed. But I am not his. And already I am fabricating a story to tell the CIA.


	4. In the Lion's Den

**4. The Lion's Den**

First he was unsuccessful obtaining the Rambaldi ruby. Now our facility in Argentina is destroyed, while he was untrackably elsewhere. I'm not sure I trust him anymore. He has always, until now, been…predictably deceitful.

"I ran into your daughter at the ball. As per your request, I did not harm her. It cost me the ruby," he explains, for the second time.

"But we have received no intel confirming that the CIA recovered it either."

He shrugs, a lazy, almost feline gesture from his position sprawled out in a leather chair. His hands are held relaxed, long fingers spread out comfortably on the plush arms.

"Is our informant reliable?"

Not any more reliable than you. Not any less.

"He has always given us correct information before."

"Perhaps there is a third party in play here. Sloane, for example. I highly doubt his new role as a humanitarian is genuine."

"Possibly."

We sit in pressured silence. But I can tell he will not be the one to break it. He gives exactly as much as I require. Never will he offer an extraneous detail, nor answer questions left unasked. Perfectly relaxed, he waits for my next move.

"Was all the material destroyed?"

"Yes."

"We need more. And that will be very difficult now."

No reaction from him, once more. His expression remains blank, impassive.

"I want you to oversee her extraction."

"Parameters?"

"As little collateral damage as possible. Use whatever resources you need. This is of the utmost importance to us, now."

"I will begin work immediately."

Rising from the chair, he begans to walk towards the door.

"And Sark…"

"Yes?"

"Try to avoid killing Jack Bristow."

He nods to this veiled order, and leaves. My eyes are tired, and I feel a headache coming. I did not want to have to do this to Sydney. Not again. Ovulation induction is fraught with unpleasant side effects, and the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation, fatal if not detected and treated early. Worse yet, it takes weeks.

* * *

The flat is lovely, in muted beige and coral, heavy silk curtains and settees upholstered in vintage brocade. But it is temporary. And it is not me. I may surround myself with old world accoutrements, but I am just as comfortable in a sniper's hide. A façade—this elegance. Not precisely necessary, but convenient within the circles we inhabit.

Sark's affectation of precisely tailored suits and fine wines serves much the same purpose. But I believe he's grown more attached to the luxuries of this world than I have. Substitution for emotional attachments, it would seem. The finest of everything to be purchased replaces personal entanglements, and reduces any loss to the mere material.

He is a tool. He is what I made of him.

But lately, I began this same train of thought, something seems askew. Forever unforthcoming with information, now he seems decidedly evasive. Always impeccably void of expression, now he betrays a tiredness in his eyes. I have seen him after forty hours active, and never did I catch this new look on his face.

Has he broken? Has he worn out?

I hit the call button on the phone.

"Give me Caldwell."

Several minutes pass before he is patched through.

"Yes?"

"I want you to tail Sark over the next few weeks. Stay out of sight. Drop everything else."

"And the new construction in Cuba?"

"Hand it over to Collins. I want to know where Sark goes, who he sees, everything."

I punch out, and recline in the plush armchair. Take another sip of grappa. Life water, to the Italians. A faint aroma of bitter tannins remains, and the stronger scent of grape skin and pulp. I wish I could send someone else to extract her, with these recent doubts. But no one is half as good as Sark. I can't help a smile: I think Sydney, his current quarry, is his only equal.


	5. Blindsided

**5. Blindsided**

It's nice having Sydney living right here, same complex and everything. And hey, if she wants to cook dinner for the helpless bachelor, I'm cool playing the role. Gotta say, it beats the take-out and frozen dinners I've lived on for the past ten years.

She's stirring something in a pot on the stove. Spaghetti and meatballs, I think she said, with garlic bread and salad. A feast. Add this nice bottle of red we're sipping and I would call it a date. Except I see the way she still looks at Vaughn. You'd have to blind not to notice. Or be Mike himself.

I don't know what to think. Seriously, Sydney is not the type of girl you ditch. But she was dead. And Lauren—there's nothing wrong with Lauren. She's nice, polished, pretty. Can't say Vaughn made a mistake marrying her. But she's no Syd.

"Smells great, Syd."

"Thanks. Francie used to do most of the cooking, before. And now it's just me and I don't bother half the time."

"Living the life of a bachelorette, huh? You can't make fun of my diet if you're eating frozen and boxed, too."

She laughs, lightly, and it's great to see her smile.

"I'm not as bad as you. I know how to boil water," she teases back, and it's the lightest I've seen her in weeks.

"Can I help with anything?"

"Do you know how to do anything in the kitchen? You know, that doesn't involve a microwave."

"Hey, be nice. I can…slice veggies, and…umm…grill burgers. Used to do it in college."

"Eric, you don't have a grill."

"But I know how."

"Here," she shoves over a box of greens I don't recognize and some ripe tomatoes, "make the salad. I'll do the vinagrette."

She takes another swallow of wine, and it stains her chapped lips almost purple. I rip the lettuce into pieces, cut the small tomatoes into eighths, and assemble it all in a green ceramic bowl. There's croutons on the counter, and I throw in some of those, too.

"So seriously, Syd, how are you doing?"

"Not bad. It's sorta nice, starting new. I mean, all that paper. Sweaters I was never gonna wear. Kitchen gadgets…I mean I never used an apple corer in my life, or an egg slicer."

"But is there anything you lost, that you would just kill to get back?"

Her smile fades, and I realize I've just stuffed my foot way down my throat.

"I mean like a thing."

"I had this book…a first edition Alice in Wonderland. My mother used to read it to me. For all the lies and betrayal, I used to love it as a child, listening to her voice, her whole attention on me."

She turned back to the stove, tasting the sauce from the pot she was stirring. I poured myself another glass of wine, finishing off the bottle.

"Hey Syd, you got another somewhere?"

"Yeah, there's a sorta cellar in the hall closet."

I walked around the corner and opened the door. Down the hall I could see her unmade bed, and the spare room that was still empty. I knelt down to grab another of the same we had been drinking, started to stand up.

A sharp pain, like a bee sting in my shoulder. Then everything went black.

* * *

I woke up slowly, groggy, sprawled out on the floor with the neck of the bottle still in my hand and glass and red wine spattered on the hardwood. It was dark: apparently the sun had set while I was out. I must have been unconcscious for hours.

Standing up slowly, my vision swam before me. That was some tranq dart. It was still lodged in my shoulder, and I pulled it out. Not a make I'd seen before. I stumbled back to her kitchen, hand on the wall to brace myself. No Syd. Not that I'd expected her to still be here.

No Syd anywhere. But nothing disturbed, no sign of a fight. Whoever had broken in and taken her was considerate enough to turn off the stove and the oven. Bizarre. The meatballs and sauce were cold, the spaghetti in the pot undrained, the beginning of my salad right where I had left them. The only thing out of place was a wooden spoon dropped on the floor, a bit of tomato sauce dried on the front of the oven and dripped onto the tile. So she'd been caught by surprise, too.

Damnit. Nothing to do but call it in. I can just see the look on Dixon's face. And Bristow's.

* * *

Her apartment is crowded with agents, crime scene techs, dusting for fingerprints. The dart pulled out of my back has already been sent by courrier for analysis. There's no broken glass, no ruined locks. So whoever it was had no problem getting in. A few of the windows are unlocked, but Sydney likes to sleep with them open, to feel the breeze.

Jack Bristow, the man of few words and even fewer emotional displays, is pacing back and forth like something caged: a predator itching to strike. On his cell phone he's tracing all his contacts, threatening and bargaining for any valuable information.

"LAPD just called," Dixon steps in front of the older agent. Finally, the pacing stops. Bristow doesn't ask questions, merely waits for the man to continue.

"There was a body found in a dumpster in Chinatown. It was identified as a mid-level operative of Irina's, a Larry Caldwell."

"So is Irina involved?" I ask, looking between the two older men. "Does this even have anything to do with Syd's disappearance?"

"Questions we will answer in time. Weiss, go find out everything you can about Irina's operations in the area. Jack and I will work on obtaining any surveillance of the area for the last day. Perhaps there'll be a clue there."

But all the cameras in a three blocks radius were shut down from four to nine this evening. And all the intel points to Irina focusing on South America and Eastern Europe, with no current interests in Los Angeles. A day later, we still have no leads, no security footage, no demands. Just a sketchy bio of Caldwell, not worth the time I spent compiling it.

So just like that, she's gone again.

* * *

A/N: Thank you for the reviews so far! And thanks to all those who are reading, even if you aren't reviewing. From here on in, I start playing a little with the Alias season 2-3 reality. Bear with me, it should become clear. Enjoy, everyone.


	6. Lost in Transit

**6. Lost in Transit **

She's finally waking up, somewhere over the Pacific, and I don't envy her the headache she's about to endure. Moaning, she rolls over on the couch, opening her eyes briefly only to snap them shut once more, too sensitive to the dim illumination. I remember watching her wake up before: early morning, sated and comfortable, yawning and bleary-eyed.

"Sark," she rasps, "what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Helping you. Saving you."

"From a home-cooked meal? Thanks, I'm sure," she snarls back. On her back now, with one arm flung over her eyes, a small sliver of skin is bared between the bottom of her shirt and the low-rise jeans she wears. I look away.

"Irina ordered me to take you. She wants more material."

"Congratulations. You've kidnapped me. How long til you hand me back over to the devil?"

"I'm not taking you to her, Sydney."

I think I've finally captured her attention, despite her hostility and intractable recalcitrance.

"The gentleman assassin, huh? Professional courtesy?"

"Hardly. I know you, Sydney. You may not remember, but I do."

Finally, she turns her head towards me and opens her eyes, suspicion clearly evident.

"What the hell do you know? It was you, wasn't? My two missing years."

"Not precisely."

"Damn it, talk! I can't take anymore of this cryptic bullshit."

I sigh. I had hoped she would respond a little better, but I can't really say I'm surprised.

"I was traded out of prison seven months after your disappearance. They had finally finished making you into Julia Thorne, had already taken your eggs. You had been working with Simon Walker for several weeks already, but it was clear you two wouldn't get along for much longer, as you both shared that same famously short temper. I was sent to work with you. But Ockley hadn't done as thorough a job as he believed."

"I wasn't really her?"

"Not completely. I could see Sydney in your actions. You had no memory of the CIA, but you knew something had been done to you.

"We had been sent out on our first mission together, to recover an industrial laser still in its experimental phase. You cold-cocked two guards rather than gunning them down point blank as a mercenary for hire should have. You shot the next in the leg rather than killing him. Small mercies, but enough to rouse my attention. When the mission was completed, and the package delivered, we went out for dinner."

Admittedly, Sydney always held a certain fascination for me. Irina's daughter, working on the other side, she was completely out of reach for both those reasons. It seemed circumstances had changed. So I asked her to dine with me at Aurora 10, known for their extensive wine list, and ordered a several hundred dollar bottle of Bordeaux courtesy of the Covenant's ill-monitored expense account.

"And I accepted?" she scoffed.

"It didn't take you long to fell into bed with Walker, and you hated that man. Besides which, I'm clearly the better catch," I sniped back. She merely glowered back at me. "You said that you recognized me. You asked if we had ever worked together before. At that moment, I knew Ockley had failed."

She was convincing enough, to anybody else. But I had spent months observing her, cataloging every gesture and expression as we sat in Arvin Sloane's briefings during our tenure together as SD-6. Lies within lies: Sydney playing the loyal CIA agent, oblivious to the true nature of her employer, while simultaneously running counter-ops for the real CIA; and myself, playing the 'for sale to the highest bidder', amoral, dishonest, self-interested sociopath, while feeding information back to Irina Derevko. Of course, most of that description is still accurate.

"A week later I had a printed dossier on Sydney Bristow, pictures included. You weren't convinced, at first. You found the idea of brainwashing preposterous."

We sat in her flat in Rome, a bottle of red wine on the coffee table. Julia was on the couch with her bare feet tucked under her, a glass of red in one hand, the file in the other, elbow resting on the cream leather.

I couldn't stop staring at her hair—bleached blonde, not a wig. She was dry ice and smoke, untouchable, slipping away like grains of sand, more and more the tighter you grasp, leaving chilblain and ether in her wake. Sydney was solid, wood and leather and spice, sable hair, eyes capable of more pain than one should ever know. Ockley inflicted enough pain upon her to bring forth Julia. But Sydney lurked there, still.

So I explained then, as I did now: "Implemented reprogramming. If you press hard enough, long enough…well, everyone has a breaking point. Even you. Ultimately, a person will do anything to survive. Become anyone."

"But, Project Christmas—"

"Is probably the reason you retained anything of your old self at all. Ockley is an expert. Sadistic, methodical, precise. None of his subjects have ever broken free of the programming before. You were to be his coup d'grace, his finest masterpiece.

"I offered you my aid in reversing the process. I retained certain contacts outside the Covenant, medical doctors with little more scruple than Ockley himself, but firmly in my pocket."

"Why? Why did you help me? You don't even know me."

"I'd rather have you as an ally. Whether as Julia, or as Sydney. And no one should be made to lose themselves as you did. No one.

"We played nice with the Covenant for awhile, completed our missions flawlessly. And if our superiors noticed that we stole millions from targets and clients alike, they never reproached us for it."

"Millions?"

She was wide-eyed now. The CIA doesn't offer nearly the compensation that is possible from more black market means.

"Enough to disappear from the game. I retained your account information when you were taken, for safekeeping. I will, of course, return it to you now."

"It's dirty money."

"Refusing it will not negate its misbegotten origins. It will just make me that much richer."

I waited for any further outburst, but she was silent, gesturing for me to continue.

"The procedure to free Sydney from Julia was almost as dangerous as the initial programming."

To prevent anyone from undoing their work, the Covenant had implanted safeguard upon safeguard: extreme autonomic dysfunction if another psychiatrist attempted to recover her memories, with such devastating effects that the doctor had to have epinephrine and beta-blockers on hand to control her heart rate and blood pressure. Fits of violence that required five-point restraints for her safety and ours alike.

"Finally, though, after three days, you broke free."

Once more it was Sydney on the table, her tears and fine trembling, the utter exhaustion. I unlatched the leather cuffs from her wrists, ankles, and waist. There were purple bruises encircling her wrists, from her desperate struggling against the bonds. Weak, tired, hungry, she nearly fell when she tried first to stand. I caught her with an arm around her waist, and led her out to the waiting car.

"You trusted me by then, after your recovery. We bought a yacht and sailed the Islands, never staying anywhere more than a week, and keeping to the smaller ports. We grew….very close."

My mind wandered: I remember her dying her hair back to brown, standing over a third-world hotel sink with the thick pigment paste staining her neck and brow. I rinsed it out under cold water, and made love to her against the bathroom counter with my hands knotted in her hair, her small mewls echoing against the tiled walls.

"So you were…what…hoping I'd jump right back into bed with you?"

"I'm a realist, Sydney. I don't think that will happen anytime soon."

Sydney let her derision be known with a sharp bark of laughter.

"Though it does wound me, Sydney, love, to know it took seven months of torture and brainwashing before you would consider me a prospect."

"Only seven?"

Surprisingly, she didn't immediately object to my open-ended statement implying it might happen again.

"So what happened then? How come I don't remember anything?"

"I don't know, Sydney. We weren't joined at the hip. I wasn't with you when you were taken."

There were no public displays of affection between us. In the island bars she danced with the rich tourists as much as she danced with me, suffered other men to buy her drinks and tell her how beautiful she was. Partially to make me jealous, partially to prove her independence, I am sure.

Hours after she had left to pick up groceries and a drink in Bomba's shack on Tortola, the sun was setting, and still she hadn't returned. I had had to inflate the emergency raft and paddle to shore, where I found our yellow motor boat tied at the dock. Sydney wasn't in any of her usual haunts. I checked every bar up and the down the coast, becoming ever less discreet. Two days later, when she still hadn't returned, I had the boat put in dry dock and chartered a flight back to Vienna.

"You were simply gone one day. No word, no hint that you would leave. A week later I learned you had woken up amnestic in Hong Kong and called the CIA for extraction. Irina accepted me back into the fold without excessive questions. To this day, I'm not sure how much she knows. We had disappeared quite thoroughly. I don't think she knows I was with you, though she must suspect."

"Who took me?"

"That's the million dollar question, now, isn't it?"

"You don't know?"

"I'm not omniscient."

"Obviously."

"Come now, Sydney. It could have been anybody: Irina, the Covenant, Sloane, the CIA, your father. You could even have arranged it yourself."

"Why would I do something like that to myself?"

Now that she had most of the answers, I wasn't sure if she felt better or worse.

"What better way to start over, Sydney, than to literally erase the horror of seven months with Ockley? Go back to your friends and family, none the worse for wear except some missing time?"

We sat in silence for some time, the hum of the jet engine throbbing through the floorboards and furniture. At the horizon, the sky faded imperceptibly from black to deepest indigo to a twilight blue with the coming sun. There were tears on her face, and I had to stifle the urge to go to her and soothe them away.

"Does it matter, Sydney? You can disappear with a tidy fortune, live under the radar. Could you be happy with that?"

Her expression was one of longing, regret, and that steeled determination I had witnessed so often in her mother.

"I need to know what happened."

Already she is planning, plotting, burying the tears and dreams of freedom for another day. She will let herself be drawn back in, so willingly. Her eyes are open to the risks but she moves blindly forward. Once more into the breech….


	7. Father Knows Best

**7. Father Knows Best**

The sense of relief when she came back after two years was palpable. Even after each mission, no matter the risk profile, were I praying man I would have thanked any and all the powers that exist. But, in my line of work, we realize there is no higher power than our own will. I cannot help this reflexive concern for her, though I know she is the most capable, the best trained operative the CIA has. I made sure of that twenty years ago. Still, I had hoped she could avoid all this.

Then again, it is hard to imagine her as the college professor, giving lectures, leading discussion groups, grading papers. There's too much of her mother in her, and of me, I suppose, for her ever to be happy with that life. A spitfire. A live wire. I wish I could have seen Lindsay's face when she threatened to torch the microchip if he didn't set me free.

Now she's gone again.

It was months, the first time, before I uncovered hard evidence proving she was alive. I had suspected, of course. Why burn the body if she was really dead? I've faked a number of deaths with a charred corpse and DNA injected into the teeth. Why kill her if she could still be useful alive? Her knowledge, her expertise, and her face in Rambaldi's manuscript. Such macabre ideation—even as I watched Vaughn scatter _someone's_ ashes to the sea.

I play my part, with a poker face. It all has been a role since Laura Bristow died, and Irina Derevko took her place. Sydney is all that matters.

Lindsay thought that solitary would break me. He didn't realize I was already broken, in a way. His agenda, anything anyone could do to me, was trivial. Its only consequence was to interfere with my search for my daughter.

Footage of her in Rome, leaving a known front for the Covenant—an investment firm—arrived in the mail a year after her disappearance. She was alive, and I threatened and bribed and killed as necessary to find out more. I used contacts considered dangerous and untrustworthy even by SD-6. I provided arms to terrorists in exchange for scraps of intel. I used up every favor I had ever collected, and indebted myself to men whose idea of payment can be barbaric. I knew she was working for the Covenant. Soon after, I knew she had escaped them.

This time there's no body, no collateral, not even any damage to her apartment. Had I not heard Weiss's debrief, I could almost belief she left of her own volition.

Days pass and no matter how many contacts we bully and threaten, the well seems to be dry. No one has seen her. No one has heard anything. I hate to supply them with even this much intel: that she is gone again, and the CIA has no idea what happened. How incompetent we must look, that we keep losing her over and over again.

I would consider contacting Irina, the crime for which I was falsely accused two years ago, but she remains a suspect in our daughter's first abduction. And the woman is a masterful liar. I wouldn't trust a word that came out of her mouth were she quoting me the weather report.

Irina, Sloane—with his preposterous makeover as the world's finest humanitarian, Sark—who seemed to take a sabbatical from the game during the last half of Sydney's own absence. Either singly or together, with or without aid of the Covenant. Is the same party responsible for both disappearances? There are a number of individuals and lesser criminal organizations that certainly have grudges against her, but with neither a body nor a list of demands, I find this option less likely.

* * *

I have a key to her apartment, copied from her own, without her knowledge, while she was in Spain on a mission. There is no police tape across the door, which would only raise too many questions. After dark, I let myself in, stand in the entrance-way and turn on the lights. It's much more sterile than her old apartment. Sparse furnishings, muted colors, almost nothing on the walls. 

There were always posters, when she was younger. Then art fair finds and photos of friends, cheap art prints in dark wood frames. Colorful fabrics on the windows, mismatched garage sale and antique store dishes and cups.

Thankfully, someone—probably Weiss—disposed of the meal she had been making when she was taken. All the broken glass was gone, but dried red wine still crusted the hallway floor. The linen closet contained one set of sheets, white, two beige towels and several washcloths. In the bathroom, the medicine cabinet was almost empty, except for rubbing alcohol and bandaids, Advil and Trazodone. Apparently, she had been suffering some insomnia.

Her bed was unmade, a pair of pants and a shirt hanging over the edge. I recognized it as what she had worn to work that last day. The closets and dresser were unrevealing. Several books and a small jewelry box rested on the nightstand.

Sydney had never worn much jewelry, even before. I had seen her with simple earrings at the JTF, occasionally a necklace. Never a bracelet or a ring: nothing to interfered with her grip on a gun.

Curious, I opened it.

Inside was much as I had expected. Until I pried up the false bottom and among the fake passports and money in four different currencies, found a ring set with an impossibly large red stone. Not garnet. Couldn't be a ruby. Unless…no, the idea was too ridiculous even to consider. Still, I would check. I pocketed the ring, and let myself back out.

* * *

"Marshall, what can you tell me about the Rambaldi ruby?"

I've startled him. He jumped up quickly almost knocking whatever project he was fiddling with onto the floor.

"The…the one we tried to steal from Bennett? Not steal….I don't mean steal, 'cuz hey, CIA here? We were just going to obtain the gem and—"

"Marshall."

"Right, right. The babbling. Carrie is always telling me to—"

"Marshall…the ruby?"

The man is a genius, but lacks the social skills of a day-old baboon.

"Why are you interested?"

"I have a contact who claims he's seen it. I need to know how to verify it really is the Rambaldi ruby," I lie smoothly.

"Oh, okay…well…as you ruby is corundum with chromium impurities. That's what gives it the red color. The Rambaldi ruby is supposed to be a Burmese ruby. They have this wicked fluorescence in daylight, see, and only rubies from that area have it. And the color is a true ruby red…not that I've seen it, since, well…we didn't actually get it. You think Syd's alright?"

"We're using every resource we have to look for her."

"It's just…I feel like we just got her back and now she's gone again already."

I waited for him to pull himself back together.

"What does it look like?"

"Huh? Oh, the ruby. It's a cabochon cut ruby, by report nearly twenty carats, though no one has ever taken it out of the setting to weigh it properly. Which they really should, for insurance purposes, right? The star isn't that distinct, but the clarity is excellent, and the color is just amazing…or, err, so we've heard. If you can really believe the Rambaldi manuscript and what Sloane has told us. It was mined in the 1400's and stolen several times, disappeared for a hundred years before resurfacing—"

"Thanks, Marshall. That's all I need."

* * *

"So, what can I help you with, Mr. Boyer?" 

Mr. Solomon led me into his private office, bypassing the displays of ornate jewels and watches in the front of the store. He was reputed to be a very respectable dealer, both in new jewelry and estate pieces.

"My mother recently passed away," I began.

"I'm so sorry to hear that."

"She was sick for a long time. It was a blessing, really, that she did not suffer much."

I paused for a beat.

"There is some jewelry among her effects. But I am not familiar with this piece in particular. I would very much appreciate an appraisal."

"Of course."

I handed the requisite black velvet box to him. Upon opening it, he nearly gasped.

"If this is authentic, Mr. Boyer, this is…incredible."

With a loupe he examined the ring, murmuring to himself all the while.

"Mr. Solomon?"

"This is most definitely a ruby, sir. Burmese, though it must be years since a ruby this fine came out of Burma. Oval cut, and it is cut beautifully: nice ratio of crown to pavilion, maybe a touch shallow, but that works to show off the color saturation…I would estimate fifteen, maybe sixteen carats, give or take. This ring is worth over a million, probably two or three. I don't deal in jewelry of this quality. I'm sorry, Mr. Boyer, but you will have to take it to someone with more experience in the auction market. I'm so sorry I couldn't tell you more. I can remove the ruby from the setting to weigh it, if you wish."

"That won't be necessary right now. Thank you."

We stood, and shook hands.

"No, really I should thank you. I have never handled such a fine stone in my career."

I left, managing to maintain my bereaved façade until I was out the door. There could be no doubt: this was the famed Rambaldi ruby, recut and reset. How else could Sydney have come by such a ring? The very same ruby we lost to the Covenant—except there was no confirmation it was ever delivered to them. And who had the Covenant sent to retrieve it? Their very own boy wonder.

Finally, I could see the answer forming.

* * *

A glass of Lagavulin in my own sparse living room, light glinting off amber liquid through the cut crystal glass. A wedding gift, ironically. 

Circumstance had led her, somehow, to Sark. My instinctual reaction was one of disgust, disapproval. Upon further analysis, though, what did I find so objectionable about him? He was a killer, but so was she. A liar, but Sydney was more than capable of that herself.

And really, ideally, who would I wish for her—another Danny Hecht? His was a dying breed. A dashing young man to marry and betray her, as my own wife had me? Hardly. Vaughn? He was just a boy following in his father's footsteps for lack of a better path.

Sark's moral expediency matched my own. The difference was this: any morally questionable act I have performed has been either for my country, or more frequently, for my daughter. His motives have not been so transparent.

I placed the ring in my office safe. Sark was the link to Sydney, my only clue. It was time to found out what he had been doing last year.

* * *

A/N: Thanks to everyone who has been reading and reviewing! 


	8. Interlude

**8. Interlude**

Hours later, Sark was shaking me awake, his hand on my shoulder lingering a moment too long. For him, it was only a few months since we were together, living the refugee dream on a yacht in the tropics. He looked at me like I was his, now that I could decipher that gaze. Strangely vulnerable, where before his eyes had always been granite hard and thoroughly blank.

I didn't want to know that the enemy had a softer side.

He handed me a mug of coffee and a bagel with cream cheese, watching me from his seat across the small cabin as I ate. With the first bite I realized I was starving, and wolfed the rest of down. Then the plane was starting its descent into a private airfield outside Moscow, and Sark handed me boots and a black down coat, both my size. In the pockets I found well-worn gloves and chapstick, wraparound sunglasses, and a wad of bills: some rubles, some dollars, some Euros.

"They were yours, before…"

"I thought you said we were in the Caribbean?"

"Among other places."

I wouldn't ask him for more details, not now. The gloves were butter-soft and molded to my hands. I had worn these before, in a past I can't remember.

On the runway a car was waiting. Sark drove us to a safehouse of his in the outskirts of Moscow, a small flat in an old Communist housing project.

"What? No five-star hotel?"

"This will be safer."

No snide remark, no clever retort. The rules between us were suddenly changed. It felt like the world was tilted on end, and I was just barely clinging to the edge. How was I to act around him after everything he told me? I had imagined a thousand scenarios explaining those two years, each worse than the last. This, though, I had never considered.

It was a cold-war era housing project: cheaply constructed, concrete and linoleum floors, barely insulated walls. The elevators were broken and the entranceway covered in graffiti. I followed Sark up five flights of stairs to a barely-lit hallway with its low ceiling and narrow concrete walls. Evening, here, and I could hear the sounds of conversation and running water from each apartment we passed.

Sark stopped at a door just like all the others and unlocked it.

Even with the lights on it remained dim, and dingy. Wallpaper hung in shreds in the main room, furnished only with an ancient plaid loveseat, the cushion duct-taped together at one corner. A decade's worth of dust and grime stained the floors.

While he fumbled the gas burner alight in the kitchen I wandered the cramped living room and single bedroom. These closets held more clothes than my own did. I pulled on faded jeans, sports bra, a thin cotton shirt and a dark blue wool sweater. An opened box of condoms sat on the floor beside the mattress, with its million questions I couldn't answer and wouldn't ask. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

For him it was weeks. For me, it had never been.

When my memory was erased, which one of us had lost more?

We sat at the rickety kitchen table and ate canned soup and five-minute rice. There was a block of cheese, which we ate, once I had cut out the spots of mold. So glamorous, this life: from ballrooms to brothels, from gated estates in England to guarded munitions depots in Turkey. I've killed as many men as I've been sent to charm and seduce; worn kevlar and combat boots as often as stilettos and silk. And now, I sat in an almost comfortable silence with a man I knew only from firefights and brutal hand to hand. I remember lodging an ice axe in his thigh, and he…he remembers me in that unmade bed.

* * *

"Yours is the green one," Sark said, grabbing the other, and brushing his teeth in front of the mirror. 

"Mine?"

He nodded, and bent over the sink to spit. He wore black sweatpants slung low on his hips and a grey tee that showed off the hard muscles underneath. And I had always found him attractive, but before it was only a clinical observation. Just sizing up the competition.

"How long were we here?"

"A few weeks, here and there. We ran a couple missions outside Moscow last spring. Though you never did like the food here as much as in Rome."

That detail did nothing to calm me. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, with the same soap I had at home. If I could even call that sleek apartment a home. In this cold flat I was living a domesticity I hadn't had since Francie…since I'd killed the woman wearing her face.

He was in the bed, buried under a pile of down blankets, when I made my way into the bedroom.

"I am not sharing the mattress with you."

"I don't know if you've noticed," he drolly began, "but the heat isn't exactly working at the moment. If you don't want to freeze, you'll sleep with me."

"If you so much as—"

"I promise I'll be a perfect gentleman."

"Because your word is so reassuring," I retorted, even as I slid in beside him. As I reverted to our familiar bickering, he seemed to gentle further.

"You used to think so."

"Shut up."

"Good night, Sydney."

He turned off the lamp, so that the only illumination came from the flickering glow of the streetlamps. His breathing slowed long before I found sleep. Outside the cocoon of blankets, the air against my face was frigid: I could see the fog of my breath in the sulfur light from the window.

* * *

I woke to the smell of coffee. Sark was leaning on the kitchen counter watching it drip into the pot, his hair mussed from sleep.

"You're up."

I mumbled an incoherent response, and searched the cupboards for a mug. We stood in silence, looking out the window at the grey streets below.

"I want to see the flat, in Rome."

"I don't think that's entirely safe. I'm sure the Covenant has it under surveillance."

"I wasn't asking for permission."

He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, which only made it stick up more.

"I can, of course, arrange a flight for us. Probably not until tomorrow."

"Just give me my account information. I can handle it on my own."

"You aren't seriously thinking of doing this by yourself."

His voice was flat, his intonation barely suggesting a question. Just that raised eyebrow. I didn't answer him.

"They'll be looking for you, Sydney. They will take any chance you give them to bring you back in. You need backup. You need me right now."

He was either angry or concerned, maybe both.

"I don't even know you. Thanks for kidnapping me. I guess it's better you than Irina. But this is it. We are not partners. We're not even friends!"

"Bloody irritating woman…" I heard him mutter under his breath, pacing the length of the tiny kitchen before turning back towards me. His movements were stiff and erratic, so unlike his usual economical grace. "I won't tell you where it is. I won't give you anything, Sydney. We go together."

"This is my life, Sark!"

"I'm not going to watch you throw it away!"

I put my mug of coffee down on the counter and walked into the living room, shrugging on my coat and pulling on that gloves. He followed me.

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

"You won't get far. You've no ID, barely any money."

"I'll manage."

He moved towards the door, and I expected him to try to bar my way. Instead he unlocked the deadbolt and held it open for me.

"There's an excellent bakery just up the street. Pick us up a loaf of bread while you're out."

I could have hit him for the smug assurance that I would come back, and run errands for him to boot. But he was right. As much as I hated to admit it, I did need him for this. Continuing my work for the CIA would lead to too much exposure, and wouldn't give me the answers I wanted anyway. He knew me. So disturbingly well. His actions had proved that over and over again.

Overnight it had snowed, maybe an inch or two. Already the streets were full of people, shopping, heading to work in the bitter cold. I buried my hands in my pockets and wished I had a hat.

The bakery was excellent: I gorged on sweet pastries and steaming coffee, bought a loaf of bread. Read the day-old newspaper someone had discarded at one of the small tables. Inside, the small bakery was hot and smelled like yeast and sugar. I stayed for an hour, enjoying the warmth, watching the passers-by and thinking of the annoying blond that waited for me back at our apartment.

It was bad enough to need him; worse still to want him. But the freedom of not having to hide anything, of never having to lie, was so incredibly attractive. I could be with Sark without playing a part. Just when had an international terrorist made it onto my prospective guy list? But I wasn't sure I could overlook the moral ambiguity of being with someone like him. There was so much I just didn't know.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the delay. The next chapter has been really difficult for me to write. Thank you to everyone who keeps reading and reviewing. Sydney and Sark will eventually stop fighting so much, it will be Sarkney in the end, just for anyway who was worrying. 


	9. Politics

**9. Politics**

After Sydney's two year absence, we had finally gotten used to having her back in the conference room, always seated next to Mr. Bristow. Now, she was gone again. And that emptiness was back.

"…They plan to strike in Lisbon, at this bank," Dixon was explaining some new terrorist threat. Something the local police should be able to handle, but it involved the US embassy there as well. "Jack, Vaughn, you'll be heading out this afternoon to Portugal."

"I'm leaving for Geneva tonight, to talk with Sloane."

"There's no need. I've already questioned Sloane about Sydney's disappearance. He knows nothing about it," Lauren spoke up from beside me.

"I've already made the arrangements. I would like to speak with him myself."

"Mr. Bristow, I assure you I have already debriefed Sloane on this matter."

"That is not in question, Ms. Reed."

"Then why do you keep on undermin—"

"Vaughn, you'll go to Lisbon with Weiss. Jack will see Sloane. Lauren, no one is questioning your abilities. But Jack does have certain history with Sloane. Perhaps he will reveal something to Jack that he did not tell you. Meeting dismissed."

Dixon tried to play peacekeeper. But she was angry. I don't blame her. Jack seems as disappointed with her presence as with mine. He never did think me capable as an agent; I hope his view of Lauren isn't tainted by his opinion of me.

I used to wonder how Dixon ended up as head of our division, when Jack was so much more experienced. But I could never see Jack as an administrator. Jack was ruthless and calculating, fierce, impatient. His sometimes blatant disregard for procedure made him amazingly effective, but a poor choice for a leader within the agency. In some ways, I think he fit in better at SD-6.

I followed Lauren to a more private corridor, where she turned on me, cheeks flushed, to talk about Jack. Her perfume was something light, floral, just strong enough to notice when she stepped close to me.

"Why does he insist on making me look like a fool? He's as bad as Sydney," she hissed at me, checking to make sure no one was within earshot. "He never listens to me, doesn't trust my intel."

"He's just not used to you, yet. He'll come around. You'll see."

"It's more than that. He thinks I'm incompetent."

"Just cut him some slack, Lauren. He's under a lot of stress. He just lost his daughter again. He's not the enemy."

"Yeah? Well he could've fooled me."

Even angry, like this, Lauren was so much more feminine than Sydney. Civilized, domesticated, somehow, where Sydney was a feral thing, quick to anger and quick to show it. In those early days as her handler I used to wonder how she ever fooled Sloane. With me, it seemed there was no filter between her brain and her mouth. I've never had a shouting match like that with Lauren. It was hard to imagine her holding back with Sloane, day after day.

I waited awhile before going to say goodbye. I knew she wasn't angry with me. Still, she needed time to cool off. Jack came walking into the corridor as I was leaving, on his cell phone. Looking almost relaxed, for the first time in days. Not that I've ever seen him relaxed. He was always self-contained, and vaguely aggressive.

Lauren was at her desk, working on paperwork.

"I'm heading out, Lauren. I'll see you when we get back."

"Do you want me to drive you to the airport?"

"No. I still need to go home and pack."

"Okay, Michael."

She stood to give me a quick kiss on the cheek.

"I love you," she said in that smooth British accent.

"I love you, too."

I was struck again how different she was from Sydney. Sydney never wore a skirt to work, was most comfortable in jeans or combat fatigues. Oh, she could be breathtaking in a dress when she had to. But she never wore perfume, never wore jewelry if it wasn't some device designed by Marshall for a mission. The two women I had loved were almost polar opposites. And, looking back on it now, Sydney wasn't the better match. I couldn't imagine her ever settling down, leaving the CIA to raise a family. With Lauren…with Lauren I would have that chance.

* * *

A/N: I am so sorry to everyone for the delay. I've been sick and sleeping sixteen hours a day. I've also been working on the next three chapters simultaneously, unsure of the ordering. So the next postings should be up pretty quickly. They should be a bit longer, too. 


	10. When in Rome

**10. When in Rome**

Sydney was gone for hours. And though I knew she was in no more danger here than any other location, and though I was fairly certain she would come back to me, still it was…unsettling…to wait in that cold apartment for her.

When she did return her ears were red, her cheeks wind-chapped. She didn't bother to knock, opting instead to pick the lock. Another useful tool she found in the coat, I suppose.

It had always amazed me, on missions here in Russia, what she would pull out of the pockets of that ridiculous down jacket. It made her look like a burnt marshmallow. But in the field I had seen her produce guns, knives, a garroting wire, first aid kits, food, water, and once a very black market GPS unit and sat phone from within its bulk.

Her steps carry her past me into the kitchen, where she deposits a large paper bag on the cracked linoleum counter and pulls out a loaf of bread, and what smells like dinner from one of the nearby restaurants. I'm not sure what to say to break the silence. I don't wish to send her running away from me again.

"I got us dinner."

"Thank you, Sydney."

I take this as an invitation to move into the kitchen, and help her unpack the groceries, open the styrofoam containers, and dig out silverware. She pulls a case of Baltika Porter from the bottom of the bag, a strong beer—seven per cent—that she never really liked. Still, I open two bottles for us and we sit at the rickety kitchen table feasting on chicken lapsha and lamb pelmeni. She makes a face as she takes her first sip of beer, and I can't help but laugh.

"What?"

Her tone is rather adversarial.

"You never acquired a taste for that beer."

I get a glare in response, but she keeps drinking it.

"How was your outing?"

She shrugs, and keeps eating. My attempt at starting a civil conversation is falling rather short. This is hard…harder even than I anticipated. After living together for months, even now that her memory of that time is gone, I thought we would be able to get along more easily. That some residual of how she felt towards me would remain.

"Have you decided, about Rome?"

Finally, she meets my eyes. Her ears are back to their normal color, but her cheeks still appear flushed.

"As much as I hate admitting it, it would be better if you came along."

Spoken as if I am a mere accessory to this enterprise, rather than the one holding all the cards. But now is not the time to debate that finer point.

"Good, then. I arranged a flight for tomorrow, if that suits you."

"I need to contact my dad, too. Let him know I'm alright."

"That would be better left for tomorrow, as well. We can stop somewhere along the way to call him."

She nods, takes another gulp of the beer, and tries not to make a face at the bitterness. Despite her obvious distaste for it, she goes on to open a second bottle, and a third. We move to the couch and she sprawls out with her feet across my lap.

"Was I happy?"

"I think you were, yes. After we disappeared together."

"You think I was? You're not sure? God, can you ever actually answer a direct question? You're the only person I can ask."

It might have been said in anger, but the glassy sheen to her eyes told me otherwise.

"You were happy, Sydney. We were happy."

She stems the flow of tears with the back of her hand against her eyelids. It is not the answer she wants to hear, I guess, that the last time—the only time in years—that she was truly happy she cannot even remember. I rest my hands on her scarred shins, and she lets me for a moment.

"I suppose I should thank you…for helping me. Then. Now…"

Not sure how to respond, I say nothing. Her emotional fragility was always vaguely shocking to me. Before we were together she had always seemed a pinnacle of strength. Oh, she was desperate, yes, to save her Agent Vaughn once upon a time, to bring down Sloane, to stand up for puppy dogs and apple pie and children everywhere. But despite that, or because of it, she had always seemed driven rather than overwhelmed.

"My life is so screwed up."

"I'm not exactly a paragon of normalcy, either, Sydney. But this isn't a contest. Normal lives are for normal people. We—" I tightened my grip on her legs, "—are anything but."

At that she nodded, seemed to calm somewhat. Yet she pulled her feet from my legs and walked away to shut herself in the bathroom. There came the sound of running water. I stood at the door, listening, but couldn't hear any sobbing. And so, let her sit in there and brood alone.

Tomorrow, she would need to pull herself back together. Rome would not be the simple sightseeing stopover she thought.

* * *

Her lean body was hot against my back when I woke up. Quickly, I disentangled myself from her and from the sheets. She murmured wordlessly and rolled over without waking, dragging half the blankets with her. I showered hastily under the cold stream of water, and set the coffee to brew before venturing back to rouse her from sleep.

She startles awake with the briefest touch of my hand on her shoulder. I suppose I should be flattered she is relaxed enough around me to sleep at all.

* * *

On the way to the airport we stop at a dismal looking gas station. Huddled against the cold in a phone booth, she places the call to her father. I pump gas into the nearly full tank and try to lip read. I can't tell from here what she says to him, but the conversation is brief. 

"He knows that I'm with you," she says, when I start up the car. "He found the ring."

"Oh?"

"He wasn't as angry as I thought he would be. He just said he'd hunt you down and kill you slowly if you hurt me."

"I wouldn't expect anything less from him."

She laughed a little at that, a soft sound. I had known the ruby was a loose end. But I hadn't had time to search her place for it. I had just killed Caldwell and knew it was only a matter of time before Irina found me out.

* * *

Three hours in commercial coach, with its requisite screaming children and inattentive parents, and we emerged into the humid air of Rome, twenty degrees warmer than Moscow had been. Carry-on luggage only. Customs may have looked at us askance for that but let us through with our forged passports and a civil _benvenuto al Italia_. 

We caught a taxi to the Via Veneto to check in at the Westin Excelsior, where I had selfishly booked a suite rather than two separate rooms. The Westin because I wanted to show off, perhaps, after her comment on the accommodations in Moscow.

"You don't have a tenement flat in Rome?" she asks, as we enter the suite.

"I always just stayed at your place."

The rooms seemed woefully empty with just our two small bags. I didn't want to take her to the apartment that night, and thankfully she didn't argue. So I took her back to Aurora 10, a bit of sentimentality on my part. Ordered that same bottle of wine and watched over the rim of my glass as she cracked open crab claws and scooped tiny morsels of clam from their shells, smiling up at me intermittently.

Strange, to sleep alone again. As strange as it was to trust someone enough to sleep with them. The doors were shut between us and I couldn't even hear her breathing.

* * *

The humidity remained, and it dawned gray and drizzly. We stopped by a small cache for weapons before heading on. As we walked, the heavy foot traffic of the Via Veneto gave way to a less crowded, but no less fashionable, neighborhood of walk-ups and cafes. 

Up the creaking stairs of her building, she follows me, watches as I unlock the door to this place in her buried past. Inside it is just as I remember. She wanders into the bedroom, seems to startle as she looks up through the skylight at the nearby church.

"I've seen this before…the angel…I thought they were dreams."

"The skylight is one of the reasons you chose this apartment," I explain, although I'm not sure she is listening.

I never understood why an atheist would want to sleep under the watchful spectre of an angel. And for me, actually raised Catholic until I was old enough to think for myself, making love to her in sight of that church always fell somewhere between sacrilege and high humor.

She opens closets, cupboards, the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, pockets a prescription pill bottle, fingers the black silk of a shirt draped over the desk chair. Lost in reverie, if not memory.

As she turns the corner from the hallway back into the bedroom, a bullet lodges in the plaster, grazing her sleeve and just barely cutting skin. A thin line of blood wells up through the gash in her shirt. Our eyes meet for half a second as we both drop to the floor. I pull the Sig from its holster at my side.

There's blood on the floor now, too, her blood. Another bullet embeds itself in the wood. I slide to where she is, covered by the wall. The shooter must be up on the church roof. It's the perfect vantage, the one I would choose myself.

I risk a quick glance around the corner, up through the broken skylight, fire off a single cover shot.

"Syd, stay here. Fire off a few more shots. I'm going into the church."

I stop to throw her some gauze and antiseptic from the bathroom, then head out into the street, gun at my side, in a low run that takes me quickly across the alley between her building and the church.

Inside, I slow my gait, take greater care to conceal my weapon. We had visited here before, luckily, after hours. Wandered up the stone steps all the way to the bell tower sixty feet up. Had an "assassin's picnic" as Julia jokingly named them—a midnight meal in some centuries old building or church we had broken into—laid out on a red tablecloth under the great iron bell. Steamed mussels with pancetta, squash risotto, pan seared duck, with a bottle of Sangiovese and a decadent chocolate gateau.

Smashed our empty glasses down to the street below because we were drunk and happy, and almost ready to reverse what had been done to her.

Julia lit a candle for herself on our way out, mockingly. Though she did leave a small donation: a crumpled wad of Japanese yen left in her purse from a recent assignment. She commented on the blood red glass holders for the votives: how they were such an appropriate color both for us and for the church.

We didn't even make it to the bedroom back in her flat, losing our clothes between the front door and the couch. Afterwards ending entwined on a leather armchair, with her hands curled against my chest.

Now the church is crowded with a mixture of pious locals and tourists come to admire the elaborate statuary and precise architecture. I slow my pace, as if to view the magnificent artwork, when I would much rather take the belfry stairs at a sprint.

A velvet rope cordons off the staircase. I duck under nonchalantly—if you act like you belong, people tend to believe that you do—and walk until I am out of view of the main cathedral before taking off at a run. He's there, stretched out across the stone floor with a sniper rifle propped in front of him.

This is appallingly easy. He only just notices my presence before I lodge a bullet in his brain. I search the body, finding no identification, no clues except keys to a Toyota on a fob stamped with OmniFam's logo.

* * *

Her arm is bandaged by the time I get back, and she's pulling the black knit shirt over her head, wincing as it scrapes across the wound. I toss the key chain to her, and her face contorts in a murderous rage.

"You should've killed that bastard in Japan."

I can't say I entirely disagree. But if not for him, we may never have met.

"I think it's time we had a chat with Sloane."

* * *

We stay in the suite for the evening. Her shoulder wound is nothing more than a scratch, but she seems in a poor mood at the thought of confronting her former employer, her would-be murderer.

While she's in the shower I order room service. It arrives under silvered domes; I tip the maid and open the bottle of bordeaux myself.

Sydney re-emerges in a luxurious robe much too big for her small frame. I offer her a glass of the dusty red, and she accepts, taking a few sips before setting her glass on the coffee table. There's a flush on her cheeks, from the wine, or the shower, or something else entirely. She moves to stand between my legs, leans over to kiss me, and I can see the swell of her breast where the robe gaps open.

She tastes like berries, licorice, the dust and bright tannins of the wine. Her mouth is urgent against my own: she kisses not like a new lover but as if drowning in the inexorable tide that pulls us together. Though it pains me, I took her gently by the shoulders, taking care to avoid her new wound, and push her away.

"At the risk of being a perfect git, I won't have you for just one night. I'm used to having all of you. I won't settle for less."

"I know, Sark."

It's neither agreement nor rebuttal. But I'm not strong enough a man to deny her when she slants her lips across my jaw, strokes her strong hands down my sides. She is a deluge, a monsoon of passion unleashed against my own. I slide the shoulders of the robe down her arms, scrape my teeth against her collarbone, her pulse point.

Somewhere between the sitting room and the bedroom she strips me of my shirt and pants. Our coming together is tidal, fierce and slow, raw and painfully euphoric. The gash on her arm has bled through the bandages with our lovemaking, but she continues to move against me, eyes dark, body tensed as she nears her release. Then she shatters, draws me along with her over that precipice.

She stretches out alongside me, body lax, eyes half closed. Her hair is a mane of chocolate and cinnabar, damp from the shower and our own exertions. Soon, she is asleep, with her head tucked against my chest. If I am worried about what the morrow will bring, it fades with the feeling of her slender rib cage rising and falling under my hand.

I will kill Sloane. I will kill anyone and everyone who was involved in ever taking her from me. This murderous rage is new, a black pit inside my chest that demands I take blood for blood, an eye for an eye. Rage that cries for me to level empires to ashes, to render my enemies unto utter destruction. Until now, killing has always been a mere tool, nothing personal, neither particularly enjoyed nor despised. But for Sydney, I would paint a swath of blood across the globe. And revel in the carnage.

* * *

A/N: I looked for awhile, and I'm fairly sure the angel they show over Sydney's apartment in Rome is actually a statue from the Bridge of Angels, not a church at all, and certainly not overlooking any residential buildings, if that shot is even from Rome. Maybe someone can identify it for me? 


	11. Charity

**11. Charity**

He came walking in with his usual stoic demeanor, looking the part of the international businessman in an expensively tailored dark suit, muted shirt and tie, and a pair of silver wire-framed glasses. In one hand he carried a briefcase, with his wool coat slung over his other arm. Respectability incarnate. Never judge a book by its cover, it is said, and my memory dredges up a picture of Jack just recently married, tracking down novels and volumes of poetry from a particular book dealer in Russia for his treasured wife.

"Jack, my friend. It's been too long."

"We hardly need to keep up that pretense any longer, Arvin."

"Would you like anything to drink? Tea perhaps, or water?"

"No."

I poured myself a glass of water, and sat back down behind the desk. 

"I'm looking for Sydney."

"You come to me for help tracking down your wayward daughter? That certainly falls outside the purview of my pardon agreement."

My pardon did encompass providing damning evidence against Jack—my oldest friend, my closest enemy—proving him in contact with his wife after Sydney's disappearance. I suppose technically he may be a widower. His wife is as dead as Sydney's mother. And neither ever truly existed. 

"I am not here as a representative of the CIA."

"I don't know where she is."

Which was true. Sark was supposed to hand her over her to Irina. But as in so many other cases recently, he seemed to acquire the target without ever completing delivery, leaving a trail of unsolved deaths or disappearances in his wake.

"But you know where she was, these past two years."

"For the most part. But so do you, Jack. Have you even told her?"

"That's irrelevant."

"Sydney will not appreciate you withholding information from her. She values honesty—"

"Don't presume to lecture me about my own daughter. Don't pretend to know who she is."

"But I do know her. For years at SD-6, especially before she became a double agent for the CIA. I was there for her more than you during that period of time. Emily and she were so close. She was like a mother to Sydney. And there were times when she looked to me as a father."

"I know about your affair with Irina. I've had the medical files reviewed: Sydney is not your daughter. And any affection she had towards you died with her fiancé."

"History, all of it long past."

"Not to Sydney. Not in our line of work. History is everything."

"Our line of work is not the same anymore, Jack. I suppose it never was; you betrayed me from the very beginning."

"I am not as naïve as those in the CIA who brokered and approved your pardon agreement."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but this is what I do now," I said, gesturing around the room. "I run Omni Fam, nothing more."

"Just tell me what you know, Arvin."

I took a sip of water, feigned reluctance.

"When the CIA destroyed the Covenant lab in Argentina, Irina lost the remaining ova that were harvested during Sydney's initial capture. She needs more material."

I could say that much without betraying either side. Though it wouldn't do Jack much good, as Sydney was not in our custody.

Jack gave me a chilling smile, leaned over the desk and whispered: "I will kill you, Arvin, if she has been hurt."

An empty threat, it sounded. It lacked the personal animosity I was used to from him, these past years. Still, he was hiding something. Jack knew more than he had let on. 

* * *

It was Jack I went to, of course, when in Emily's worst weeks of chemotherapy, she would beg for a bit of opium, a bit of hash to ease her pain, her crippling nausea. It was unbearable, then, to watch her fade from the beautiful creature she had been to this wall-flower waif, this thin shell of a woman who may once have been.

Frail, curled into the fetal position fully clothed in our bed…she was the love of my life, my only love. And she was wasting away before my eyes. Any torture I could possibly have conceived for others was outstripped by the reality in front of me.

Emily was dying. And I was powerless against it.

So Jack it was, who imported prime quality opium from Afghanistan, and the purist, darkest hash from North Africa. It was I who stood in the bathroom while she smoked before every dinner, so that she could stomach just a few bites of what had been her favorite foods. 

The wigs were beautiful, of course, the best that my money could buy. She had one that almost looked like her natural hair. She used to joke that, had she known, she would have had her own hair made into a wig years ago. The attempt at humor, as all jokes made by cancer patients about their own mortality do, fell flat. Instead we embraced desperately in the master bathroom, the fan droning on and pulling the rich floral aroma of the opium out into the San Fernando valley evening chill.

Foie gras, Kobe beef grilled rare, hydroponic micro greens with five-year aged balsamic vinegar dressing, Vahlrona white chocolate mousse and a botrytyzed _trockenbeerenauslese _Riesling, all gone to waste. She ate rice with soy sauce, plain oatmeal, bread and butter. 

I finished the desert wine with the chef, who toasted to her tearfully. He had been with us for years. 

When I asked Jack, the first time, to acquire that particular item, he never even blinked. And I remember thinking what a devoted friend I had in him, what a loyal life long friend I had found, who would do anything for me without asking undue questions. Jack found her what she needed, in those dark times. And I was grateful to him.

It rankles now: to think it was all an act. Yet I like to cling to the belief he would have done it for me either way. That it was his respect for Emily, probably much more than his feigned loyalty to me, that urged him to do this favor. I wonder if he merely made evidence from recent drug prosecutions disappear, or if he actually scouted the poppy fields of the Helmand province to find the finest product. I like to believe the latter of him.

Despite what happened, Jack is still the closest thing to a friend I have ever chanced. And his betrayal of me to the CIA is not the worst I've seen of him. Not nearly.

You see, there is no such thing as good or evil; no such thing as a good person or a bad person. Only our priorities distinguish us. Which is more important: the rights of our fellow man or our own goal, whatever that may be? Some people are able to sacrifice anything for the endpoint. Others cling to a moral code that only limits their actions. This I do know of Jack: he is one of the former.

* * *

A day after her father's visit, Sydney Bristow came charging in through the double glass doors of my office, Sark following in her wake. At least Jack had scheduled an appointment…not that I wasn't expecting this encounter, sooner or later. Especially after the disappearance of our asset in Rome. 

"It's fine, Miranda. You can leave us," I reassured my secretary. She looked doubtful, but obeyed and returned to the desk. It was not the first occasion someone had burst through those doors uninvited, and heavily armed. "What can I do for you, Sydney?"

"You can tell me what you did to me, you son of a bitch."

"Now, now, Sydney…"

"Don't try to deny it. I know you too well. You had something to do with it."

I retrieved a file from the desk.

"I pursued my own investigation into your disappearance, Sydney. These are all the leads I explored, all the information I managed to gather. You are more than welcome to it. Perhaps you will discover something in there that I missed."

She glanced down at the folder suspiciously.

"You honestly expect me to believe this?"

"Do you believe in redemption?"

"Not for you," she scoffed. Mr. Sark reached forward to thumb through the file, seemingly disinterested in our heated exchange. He had made himself comfortable in one of the leather chairs, while Sydney stood a few feet away, and appeared barely able to restrain herself.

He played the part of watchdog to her well, and the absurb visual of Sydney and Julian living in the suburbs, gainfully employed, with several children, bursts into my head. Almost as believable as she and Dixon impersonating a married couple. 

Unlike Jack and I, Julian had never played well with others: he never had to, was never employed by any government, never even feigned that willing complicity. It was hard enough giving him orders. Imagine trying to give him paperwork….

Irina had underestimated Sark—indeed both of them—in ever accepting him back after their absence. She was in denial of the bond between them. Perhaps the two of them disappeared so thoroughly that we never did find any hard evidence of their relationship. Irina had long ago become accustomed to Sark being nothing more than a human weapon to wield as she saw fit…a conception that was slow to change. 

There are so many things Irina never entirely understood about Sark. Her own humanity, as it were, was subsumed by her greater devotion to Rambaldi. She assumed the same of Sark. But Sark's cultured ruthlessness disguised a deeply buried human-ness that had re-emerged with Sydney's presence in his life. And that new found humanity could be the source of cruelty and barbarism Irina could not possibly have imagined. 

All for Sydney.

The mother abandons her daughter for the prophet's quest, creates a son in her own image, only to have him abandon her for said daughter.

Sark was more like Jack than either would ever admit. And the key—the one thing they truly had in common—was this woman standing before me now. Rambaldi predicted this. But Jack held no stock in the Manuscript; and Irina preferred to read it to her own advantage.

_This woman will render the greatest power unto utter desolation…_

To render, first historical usage: to extract the impurities from by melting. Sydney melted his chill exterior, set flame to a heart whose existence others had adamantly denied. Sark is that weapon, her weapon, her power. He had never truly belonged to Irina.

But back to Sydney's disbelief… 

"Omni Fam provided routine vaccinations and medical care for over ten million children last year, and food for twice that number. We sponsor cancer research in universities across the globe, and fund programs for HIV treatment in Africa. I have changed, Sydney."

"I don't know how you got the CIA to trust you."

"Sydney, we didn't come to reminisce," Sark told her, soothingly. He looked at her like I used to look at Emily. Certain rumors were true, it seemed. Certain predictions kept hidden at great cost even from the CIA. 

"Despite this sham of an investigation," he continued, "I know you are aware of certain aspects of her disappearance and her subsequent work for the Covenant. You may or may not know what happened when she escaped from the Covenant's employ. What we are interested in is this: who took her back in? Who erased her memories?"

"Jack was here this morning."

The art of redirection: both of them were silent.

"He was looking for you, dear Sydney. He seemed worried. I take it this," I vaguely gestured to her and Sark, "is not a CIA-sanctioned mission?"

"You are not to tell anyone we were here," instructed Sark.

"I am obligated to inform the CIA of our encounter, per the terms of my parole agreement."

"You will keep your mouth shut, or I will kill you myself," Sydney threatened.

"My secrets have a price, as does my silence."

"What do you want? A donation to OmniFam?"

I almost laughed at that. She really was just as I remembered her: the same sarcasm, the fire. A daughter I could have been proud of, even as a foe.

"Just answer me a question, Sydney. Do you love him?"

"No."

Her expression was almost as conflicted, as hurt, as Julian's, who sat there suddenly completely still, folder held forgotten on his lap.

"Sydney…" he implored, voice cracking as if in pain. But her gaze stayed level with my own. And I could see the lie, even if Sark could not. Perhaps she had not told him, perhaps she honestly believed her own deception…but I could see the enmity fading in her eyes. 

"I will keep this meeting to myself, Sydney. Julian. Go now. I've already alerted security."

A bluff. Sydney was too used to fighting me to see through the lie, and Sark was too distracted by the untruth she had revealed. So they left, Sark's hand hesitantly against her back, opening the door for her as if it were her that was made of glass, instead of the entryway. Or himself.

* * *

"Irina."

"Yes, Arvin?"

"Your daughter and your protégé stopped by today."

"Oh?"

"Everything seems to be going according to plan."

"That's good to hear," she purred into the phone, her accent becoming more pronounced.

"There is one problem."

Silence from her end. But I could envision her face: the fine lines between her eyebrows as she frowned, her posture somehow tensed and relaxed all at once.

"Jack knows."

"How much?"

"Enough."

* * *

A/N: Thank you everyone for your patience, and your reviews. While the main gist of this chapter has remained the same, I've edited and re-edited the action several times. I originally thought of having Jack pass on the ruby to Sark and Sydney through Sloane, having Sloane find out that way that Jack already knows more than he should. But that didn't make a lot of sense after Sydney's phone call to Jack. So...tell me what you think. Thanks everyone for reading!


	12. Triangle

**12. Triangle**

I was just packing when the knock sounded at my door. I grabbed my gun, made sure it was loaded, and checked the peephole.

Sydney.

She looked well: a bit on edge, but no more so than usual. Her hair was loose, and she was wearing a navy wool coat I had never seen before. I opened the door, and she stepped forward into a quick embrace. Sark slunk in after her.

"It's so good to see you, sweetie."

Sark had closed the door and was edging around us, careful to stay just out of arms reach. He sat at the desk by the narrow window, watching.

"How have you been?"

Sydney shrugged, began to speak, but Sark cut her off.

"Sloane had her shot in Rome."

She glared over my shoulder at Sark, and he stared back unflinchingly.

"I'm fine, Dad. Just a scratch."

"But it could easily have been worse, Sydney," he chided her.

"Is that an 'I told you so' for going to see the flat, Sark?"

"No. I thought the bullet wound was clear enough. Perhaps not. Maybe we should go back and see if they have hired someone with better aim."

Sark's voice was just as flat as I remembered: from SD-6 briefings, from interrogation sessions when Sydney had just gone missing. The 'screw you' look in his eyes, however, was gone. The bickering I had expected, but this repartee felt too humorless. She turned her back on him in a huff. We made up three points of a triangle in the sterile hotel room.

"What are you doing in Geneva?" I asked, to break the tension.

"We just met with Sloane, who was less than forthcoming," Sark answered me, still staring at her back.

"He wasn't very informative when I spoke to him, either."

"He's lying. I know he's lying."

"How can he be lying, Sydney, when he didn't tell us anything at all?"

"Fine, then. He's just offering us one huge gaping omission after another. Is that more precisely stated, Sark? More properly literal?" she mocked, turning towards him.

"Sloane said Irina lost the rest of the ova when you destroyed the lab in Argentina," I interjected, hoping to steer the conversation in a more fruitful direction.

"When I last spoke to Irina, she instructed me to abduct your daughter. She needs more eggs," Sark explained.

"And instead you've chosen to help protect my daughter?"

"Sir, this is not the first time I've worked with Sydney. We were partnered during her tenure with the Covenant. I helped her reverse the programming. I sent you that footage last year."

"What footage?"

"During your disappearance, I received video of you leaving a known Covenant front. I knew you were alive, Sydney."

"And you never told me?"

"I didn't know much more than that. You were with them, and then you weren't. And then Lindsay had me imprisoned."

"And Sark sent you that footage out of the goodness of his heart."

"I thought Jack should know that you were alive, Sydney. You were still under the influence of the Covenant programming. You didn't seem to care one way or the other."

"Sydney, Julian, this is getting us nowhere. We need to discuss what to do next."

I felt like I was refereeing a squabble between two children. Or a lover's quarrel.

"She can't go back to the CIA. It won't be safe there."

"I agree. Sydney is safer with you."

"I'm right here, people," she protested. She had shrugged off the wool coat, and sat down on the bed, leaning back on her elbows.

"We need to destroy Irina's organization. And we need to negate Sloane's pardon agreement. Are they working together, Sark?"

"I have had my suspicions for awhile now, but no proof. We'll have to tackle them separately."

"Fine. I will see what I can dig up on Sloane. Accounts, properties…it'll be easier to procure that information through the CIA. If you two can work on Irina..."

"Certainly," Sark agreed, standing up and heading towards the door. He passed unnecessarily close to Sydney, so that his coat brushed her knee. "I'll see you back at the hotel, Sydney."

"Fine."

"Is there a number I can reach you at?"

He rattled off a series of digits, and let himself out, leaving Sydney and I alone in the room.

"Are you hungry?"

She nodded, and we made our way down to the hotel restaurant, a staid affair with booths upholstered in dark green leather, waiters in black pants and white button-ups.

"I think he's in love with me," she blurted out halfway through her salad.

"Does that bother you?"

"Not as much as it should," she admitted, and went back to picking at her food. She left the grape tomatoes in a row along the edge of her plate, and devoured everything else. It made me smile: since she was a child, she had never liked raw tomatoes. Laura…Irina, I corrected myself…used to coax and cajole her to eat them to no avail. She was a stubborn creature from the very beginning.

"I thought you'd be trying to tell me he's the enemy, not to trust him. All the usual."

"Is that what you want to hear from me?"

The waiter came and cleared our plates. She looked down at the white tablecloth in silence, her expression obviously conflicted.

"I don't know what I want."

"You don't have to decide right away."

"He says we had a yacht in the Caribbean. Like some twisted fairy tale ending, sailing away into the sunset together."

"You don't believe him?"

"Would you?"

"Francie's dead because of him, Dad. He nearly killed Will, too," she whispered across the table, watching for the waiter's approach. "How can I trust anything he says? How can you?"

"He's not so different from either of us, Sydney."

"Now there's a scary thought."

This really is not my forte, these heart-to-heart chats. I still believe it is a mother's job to talk about love and relationships with her daughter. But Sydney's mother went AWOL before the need ever arose. There followed a series of well-paid nannies and baby sitters, who must have taken care of all those needs particular to raising a daughter, needs I was clearly ill-suited to provide for.

I prepared her for the world I inhabited. Her first school dance, in eighth grade, and the nanny took her shopping for a dress and shoes. Her date, an entirely forgettable boy, fidgeted under my suspicious stare until Sydney came down the stairs looking beautiful as always. She came home early, by herself, before ten o'clock, and stormed up to her room without saying a word.

The next day I received a call from the school asking me to account for her escort's broken nose and black eye. I told the principal he could…well, I was anything but polite. As for Sydney, proud as I was of her, like everything else we didn't discuss it.

I have never felt particularly comfortable talking to Sydney about anything personal. I don't think she ever considered me a suitable sounding board, either. Yet, here we are.

"The ruby was appraised at two million dollars," I found myself volunteering, though money is never a good argument for love.

"That's pocket change to a man like Sark."

"Still, it's a rather expensive trinket to give to someone you plan to betray."

The waiter came with our dinners, and left hurriedly. She picked at her roast chicken and haricots verts, barely eating.

"Why are you still working for the CIA? You must have a nice nest egg stashed away from working so long at SD-6."

"What else would I do?"

And truly, I couldn't think of another way to occupy my time. Not really. Not anymore.

"Sark says we stole millions while working for the Covenant. Enough to disappear."

"But you can't see yourself living like that," I surmised.

She sighed, set her silverware down on her plate.

"I don't know. I just don't know."

The rest of the meal passed in silence. She looked so much like her mother sometimes it was painful. But they were worlds apart. After dinner, she left me with another brief hug. This was the most physical contact we had had since she played the Texas heiress donating a kidney to her father. Then she slipped her coat back on and strolled away, back to Sark.

At least for awhile.

A/N: Sorry all for the delay. I was having a writer's crisis, and registering for classes, a crisis in itself. Hope you enjoy. As always, please read and review.


	13. Bound to Her

**13. Bound to Her**

I want to keep her close to me, now as ever, more so since I've seen her edging away. In Rome, in Geneva, even as she slept beside me we were separated by an abyss. Though I know this reflex is the wrong course. Though I've seen before how poorly this tactic works with her.

She was distant those first weeks. In white linen pants and a bikini top, a wide-brimmed canvas hat to shield her face from the sun, she stretched out lazily on deck or in the covered cockpit. Sometimes she read. Mostly, she stared out at the horizon, her expression impenetrable. We snorkeled in waters rich with coral and a rainbow of fish, octopus, lobster. Diving elegantly down, powered by long sleek legs, she prised up conch from the sea floor, which we made into fritters or chowder. After dinner we would toss the empty shells back into the ocean.

It was my idea more than hers, really: the yacht, the ex-pat heiress lifestyle. I thought it would appeal both to her wanderlust, and her yearning for a life of comfort, absent of intrigue. I hoped if she fell in love with the lifestyle, she would stay with me.

Because she was mine, I felt, irrationally. I brought her back from the brink of disappearing into the hard shell that was Julia. I saved her, and I loved her. And she must feel something for me. We had made love, a few times. Always desperate couplings that left me spent and happy, and left her sated but restless. Both when Julia still lingered in the corners of her psyche, and later, after that spectre had been banished.

She insisted on sleeping in the tiny bedroom, barely bigger than a closet, on the small uncomfortable cushions fitted along the curve of the hull. It went on for weeks before I had the nerve to suggest otherwise.

"Come to bed, Sydney," I asked from the boat's main bedroom across the hall. Small, but luxuriously appointed with a queen-sized bed, soft linen sheets that would last generations even exposed to the tropical heat and humidity, and down pillows I knew we would have to replace yearly for those same reasons. Hardwood built-ins to keep belongings secure through the fiercest gale.

She didn't deign to respond.

For the next few days, until we docked at Soper's Hole, she slept in the covered cockpit, or on the couch in the main room. Even topside, once, curled up uncomfortably on the teak deck. Then she left the boat with her toiletries and a change of clothes stuffed in a small travel bag, to book herself a room at the tiny port hotel.

I slept in the boat, so empty without her. We met up for dinner, nightly. By some unspoken agreement she was always waiting for me when I pulled up in the dinghy around seven o'clock, the last of the light quickly fading away, leaving the sky a deep indigo. I lavished money on our meals: an endless stream of chilled champagne, spiny lobster, caviar, plank-grilled fish. Our conversation was stunted, limited to the weather, the exquisite food. The small dramas of any small port.

Occasionally we dined with other couples Sydney would meet around the island—shopping, drinking away the afternoon at one of the many open air bars. Even playing tennis, which I knew she despised except for the physical exertion and competitiveness. These were always one time affairs. We had as little as common with these rich vacationers as we did with each other, it seemed.

Finally I installed a lock on the other bedroom door, gave her the only key over a dessert of flan and fresh fruit. She came back to the boat with me, then. We made love on the expensive linens until they were tangled with sweat, before she ensconced herself in the other room for the rest of the night.

From then on, She would spend the occasional hour or two in there, silent. Eerily so, with the door locked firmly against me. Yes, I could break it down with a few strong blows in an emergency, probably pick the lock even faster. But it was a symbol of something between us, stronger even than that physical barrier.

So there were many afternoons I sat drinking a rum and ginger, the sounds of the waves almost hypnotic, while Sydney sat alone, locked in something she would not share.

() () () ()

Maybe it was her conversation with Jack that sent her back to me. She never said what it was they discussed, father to daughter. And though he seems to approve somewhat of our relationship, the last thing I am sure he would ever want to hear is that he encouraged his own daughter back into my bed.

So I hold her when she consents to be held. Stare at her from across tables and airplane aisles; study her whenever I think I won't be caught at it. Ever the enigma, she remains. We are actors, all, in this life. Playing a multitude of roles, layered one atop another. How many layers down do we hide ourselves? Or is it an act, to the very core?

() () () ()

Geneva to Minsk, via Vienna. Irina's territory. Sydney sports a curly auburn wig and black glasses for the trip, and myself a shaggy mane of medium brown. The difference is almost tangible, here in former-Soviet Belarus. The faces leaner, even the younger generation: fierce in a way that overfed Londoners could never achieve.

Days of fruitless surveillance, locked together in an unheated car, eating takeout when we could. Finally I manage to arrange a meeting with an old source of mine, through a series of cut-outs and coded transmissions.

In the bathroom of our cramped room in the center of the old city, she changed once more, transformed into a progressive college co-ed. A garb I'm sure she was enjoying: sinfully tight jeans, black combat boots, and a black hoodie with a skull and crossbones patterned across the back. Eyes smeared with kohl, black lipstick, carrying a military surplus canvas bag slung over one shoulder.

She came out glaring at me.

"Who am I meeting with?"

"A low-level informant I've retained within Irina's crew. I've always used intermediaries or dead-drops, so he doesn't know it's me for whom he works."

"Right…so is he a high school drop out or is that just the type of jailbait he prefers?"

"Sydney, this is a simple mark. Just see what he knows. The library building is barely guarded, but very public. Lots of people. It's safe because it is so exposed."

"Next time, you get to play goth girl."

() () () ()

We take the bus to the meet: I wear dark jeans an a nondescript coat so that I don't look too out of place next to Sydney. It's rush hour: the bus is overcrowded and loud. Finally it empties out, as we near the end of the line. We manage two adjacent seats, and I hold her hand—so thin and pale—in my own.

"Good luck," I whisper against the shell of her ear as we step down, my hand on the small of her back.

"There's no such thing," she retorts. I watch her strut away, already easing into the character of her disguise. I don't think she even realizes she does it.

Gloved hands in my pockets, the cold snaking into my lungs, I wait.

The building wasn't completed last time I was here. I have never been a fan of communist-era architecture, but in this case, it's replacement is arguably worse. It seems a group of engineers conspired with a few high school geometry students to come up with the design, without ever consulting an architect. Now the new Belarus National Library dominates the square: a steel and glass oddity, a rhombicuboctahedron, made even more garish by the light shows that nightly illuminate its surface. Thankfully, this evening was an abstract ballet of rings and dots, rather than the overtly patriotic Belarus flag on a background of neon green.

() () () ()

Staggering from the emergency exit, she re-enters the square. Heedless of the attention I may draw, I run towards her. Catch her as she starts to fall.

"He knew, Sark. Injected me with something. I'm so tired…" she slurs, and I drag her back into the stairwell.

"What happened?"

A shrug.

"We fought. I kicked his larynx in. Might have killed him."

I'm torn between getting us the hell out of here, and making sure the bastard is dead. Anger, and the desire to eliminate this new threat, wins out.

"Stay here, Sydney. Stay quiet."

I sprint up the stairs to the fourth floor landing where I find him on the slumped against a wall, barely breathing. He reaches for a gun on the corrugated metal floor. I stomp down on his hand, pick up the gun myself. Kick him hard in the gut.

This man is not the informant she was slated to meet. A thuggish face, his nose broken and never properly set, thick neck, muscle-bound body.

"Who sent you?"

He wheezes, but otherwise stays silent. I want to kill him now, want to watch his eyes go still and dead. I settle for delivering a stinging blow across his cheek with the gun.

"This can be slow, or this can be fast. Either way, you will die."

"Sark…she told me…you might come back."

His words are strangled, gasping, with a heavy Russian accent.

"Who?" I ask, though I fear I already know the answer.

"She has plans…for you…for both of you…Irina…"

"What plans?"

"Greatness…you will have greatness…Rambaldi…"

I kick him again, lower this time. He doubles over in pain, clutching parts of his anatomy he will never use again. Just hearing that name sends me into a rage.

"Care to elaborate?"

"This woman…will render the…"

"Try again."

I cock the gun, hold it at his temple. I won't shoot him here—it would be too loud. But he's in too much pain now to realize.

"You are her heir…in this. You will…continue…the project. Sydney will be mother…to a prophet…"

I've heard enough drivel.

"The syringe. What did you inject her with?"

"Harmless…"

Good enough for me. I finish the job Sydney started: drawing a switchblade across his neck, ear to ear. Red spills around his fingers, down his chest as he clutches his throat, and forms a growing pool on the floor. I step back to keep it from staining my shoes. Then hurry back to Sydney.

() () () ()

She's just as I left her: weak, lethargic, obtunded…

"You're okay. You'll be okay."

This litany is as much for her benefit as for mine. She is lax as I lead her, stumbling, away.

I opt for a cab instead of public transportation, hailing one down in the numbing cold I barely feel. She is shivering, but my body is still bathed in adrenaline and rage. The cabbie stares at us in the rearview mirror. I have to train my face into a mask of calm, explain that she has a bad headache. A fifty Euro tip ensures he will forget us should the authorities ask.

() () () ()

In the low light of our cramped hotel room she looks serene, asleep against the coarse blankets and lumpy pillows. I'm halfway through a bottle of cheap burgundy, dusty and stale-smelling, heat damaged. The more I drink, the less I notice how bad it tastes.

How have I come to this? Exactly when did I became bound to her? She hurts, and I make others feel it. She hurts, and a part of me I thought was gone aches for her. I open a second bottle with the cheap corkscrew I picked up at the corner liquor store. It numbs the rage, the restlessness of being caged in our too small room. But my feelings for her remain an open wound.

() () () ()

They knew we were coming. Jack was the only one we told, and I know, when it came to his daughter, his allegiance is inviolable. Has Irina known all along of my defection? Had she even counted upon its occurrence? Had she know that finally, whether I had delivered Sydney initially or taken her under my own care, we would end up back here?

Had she realized, perhaps, that like herself, her daughter could not leave a question unanswered? Not this question.

We are still pawns, but the playing field is bigger than I had thought.

() () () ()

A/N: Okay, so the National Library of Belarus wasn't completed until 2006. But I had already written it in before I found that particular detail, and I like Sark reminiscing, pontificating on modern architecture, art, and patriotism. As for the long delay, I finally just got really drunk last week and drafted out a chapter. Filled it in over the past few days. Enjoy. (I really feel like writing 'bon appetit' instead for some reason.) As always, reviews are much appreciated.


	14. The Choice

**14. The Choice**

* * *

Scratchy linen, the dull roar of traffic outside: I wake as I expected, the smell of alcohol, the sound of breathing next to me. Sark. He no longer registers as a threat. My body knows he is near to me, protecting me. I seem to know, in sleep if not in life, that he is on my side.

A monstrous headache comes on when I open my eyes. Our dull hotel room burns itself against my retinae like acid. He notices me as I moan, I think, closing my eyes again and willing it apart from me. I see a glimpse of beige walls and hideous coral furniture before drifting off in the soothing static once more.

Time indeterminate. I am asleep and know that I sleep. I am awake within this unconsciousness, watching scenes as in a movie pass me by…the highlight reel of a year I've never seen before.

"Sydney………."

Acid and cultured pearls, venom in a velvet dress.

Not the voice it is supposed to be, smooth as pebbles, the same pitch as gravel in a streambed. Somehow the poetry persists in this storm-fog brain.

"Mom."

I hope she is just as surprised by the voice she hears. I hope it is dripping with enmity and hatred…that she steps back a pace in guilt. I fear it comes out as a croak, though, day-old and dry. I've been here before, in Taipei, terror and indignance in equal measures.

She's facing away from me, though, unaware I am awake as she berates a doctor for his incomptence, yells at someone else for their failure to inform her of the sudden status change of the _target_.

"_You were so small…"_

It echoes, just a memory.

So small…

For a moment, though, I feel it, with this burning pain in my abdomen and the haze of anesthetics just now wearing off. I don't know yet what her butchers did to me. But I will find out.

Agony envelops me. The burning freezing cold, a numbness beyond hope, constant hunger and thirst. One and another in succesion, with bare hours barely comfortable. Never long enough to adapt to the rhythm, to anticipate the new pain.

And then there was something new: a calm, a comfort, a purpose. Analyzing it now, with the luxury to sit and think and watch the time tick away without fear of reprisal or incanceration, I see it was easy in a way my life before was not. A single purpose to guide my actions, a straightforward history to shape my character. Vengeance—to fuel the violence. The sudden catastrophic loss of everyone I loved—to keep me from ever loving again.

With her, the greatest loss had already been realized. There was nothing left to risk. Julia had lost all, without meaning to risk anything. Now she would win back everything but happiness, routinely putting her life on the line. Countless missions she had survived, to rise to the top of her pay bracket cold and hard as the steel of a gun.

I see how it would be appealing: especially to the Sydney Bristow of a year ago. I see how, as Sark told me: If you press hard enough, long enough…well, everyone has a breaking point. Even me. Ultimately, a person will do anything to survive. Become anyone. To live, I lost all sense of myself, subverted to this machine they made of me.

What is _he_ doing to survive? We are both altered, broken beyond repair. Any patch jobs are shoddy and temporary, by now a spare tire a thousand miles after the flat. I could cry over my hundred betrayals of self, if I hadn't already spent a thousand hours doing just that while Sark drank topside, trying his best to reach out to me, one cold dead heart to another.

Linen, again—this time smooth as thousand-laundered sheets. A man's suit, lit by a swath of tropical sun on the veranda. I remembered a drunken romp with a full moon to light the deck, its weathered teak turned ghostly grey. The land, the sky, the silhouette of our ship all indeterminate.

Gentle, gentle hands. His: calloused, I can feel, but not from handling weaponry. These were deckhand calluses, not assassin's hands.

"Sydney….."

Sark's voice, deep, hidden in the sound of the surf.

"Sydney………."

She came to me at an open-air bar at the top of an island ridge, where the breeze blows constantly through shifting leaves and the dogs bark and wander among the tables, begging for scraps. I had a load of provisions in the back of a rented white Jeep, a Red Stripe half-finished on the table in front of me, a plate of rice and beans with fried plantains.

"Sydney, we need to talk."

"Irina."

There were a few more wrinkles at the corners of her eyes than I remembered. She seemed smaller, almost delicate, in a black linen dress with Tahitian pearls at her throat.

"How are you and Sark getting along?"

"What makes you think I know where he is?"

She laughed, and motioned over the waiter, ordered a vodka rocks and watched him scurry away.

"I know everything, Sydney. I know how it all works out. If you don't leave him, I will kill him."

Her drink arrived, and she sipped in calmly, composed, as I gaped wordless across the table at her.

"I don't understand."

"I don't expect you to."

I downed the Red Stripe, feeling suddenly cold in the tropical heat.

"I won't let you kill him."

"I don't want to have to do that, Sydney. But I will, if you stay with him."

She put her dark sunglasses back on, and walked out, leaving me to weigh my unbearable choices.

This time I wake for real. Sark is still by my side, watching me with drunken half-closed eyes.

"I know what she wants," I tell him. "I know what we need to do."

* * *


End file.
